ZODB Documentation

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

A new version of ZODB has been released, 3.10.5. You can find more information at python package index, http://pypi.python.org/pypi/ZODB3/3.10.5 also while lurking on the zodb-dev mailing list; it appears that ZODB 3.11 has been getting some work. It is possible Q1 2012 a new release emerges.

Still looking for people who are interested in contributing to the ZODB documentation.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

ZODB.org is having problems with git integration. We are temporarily moving to http://readthedocs.org to have documents built on commit. Please give us feedback!

This is the first comprehensive documentation on the transaction package.

ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a very convienent feature of ZODB. Along with transactions it makes programming ZODB an enjoyable experience for the Python programmer. All persistent ZODB operations are controlled by commit/abort using the transaction package. Carlos describes integration points including datamanagers, synchronizers, and commithooks -- all integration points to wire custom code into participating with transactions. One such integration is zope.sqlalchemy which provides coordination of transactions between ZODB and SQLAlchemy data sources.

This chapter is longer than all three of the preceding chapters. It is the first comprehensive documentation on the transaction package. And it's the first chapter to use our favorite web framework Pyramid to demonstrate usage in a web context. Remember the transaction package does not depend on the ZODB. Spread the word.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Carlos has been busy polishing up for release the 3rd chapter. As I understand this is the last of the introduction to ZODB. Now the next chapters are more detailed about theory and implementation of ZODB. Explanation of MVCC, transactions, etc. You can see the latest sphinx documentation at http://www.zodb.org/zodbbook/.

Thanks to Carlos and Jens for making the ZODB book building daily on zodb.org and enabling disqus on the pages. The bar for participating is very low -- please participate. Add a comment. Even if you like it. We need to hear more peoples thoughts.

The draft for chapter three of the ZODB book is now in the github repository. There is now enough material that we felt ready to put it up somewhere for easy reading and possibly a bit of discussion. Jens Vagelpohl helped me get it up on the zodb.org web site and I added Disqus comments to the text. We'd very much appreciate any feedback on the work so far.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

August saw no advance on the book due to vacation time and the mad overwork period that usually follows. However, the draft for chapter two is now available on github, for those who'd like to review it.

A word of warning, though. People with experience on the ZODB will most likely find the material and tone are way too entry-level to be useful for them. That is because the audience that we will try to reach with part one of the book are Python developers in general. We assume no knowledge of the ZODB, not even of its existence.

If you look at the book outline, you'll see that the book is divided in three parts. The first part is this beginners guide, while the second part will contain much more detailed and advanced information. So, what I'm saying is, please be patient. I'll try to get going something from the second part for the next update.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A draft of the first chapter of the ZODB book has been committed to our GitHub repository. It's just the introductory chapter, so it might not seem like much. However, the introduction is very important when starting a technical book, since it sets the tone and helps define the audience more clearly.

If you can spend a few minutes to read it and comment, that would be very helpful.

By the way, there is now a portlet at the top right of the blog that shows the latest commits to the repository. This may make it easier to keep track of the book's progress.